How Firefox Gets Grass-roots Marketing Right

Small but Savvy Team Works to Drive Adoption, Evangelism

Posted by Garrick Schmitt on 06.10.09 @ 05:00 PM

Garrick Schmitt

At times it feels like the ad industry is constantly besieged by bad news: Budgets are getting trimmed, mass audiences are splintering into niches, display ad click-through rates are at all-time lows and no one has figured out the social-media equation just yet.

Couple that with an increasingly cluttered and information-saturated marketplace and it's no wonder advertisers and agencies are constantly looking for new strategies and approaches.

Funny then how few have looked to Mozilla and Firefox for guidance. The tiny nonprofit Mozilla Corp., whose open-source Firefox web browser has 22.51% of the market and is the second-most-popular browser behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, practices grass-roots marketing at its finest.

Mozilla competes against Microsoft, Apple and Google -- arguably the biggest and most valuable brands in the world -- and it succeeds with no traditional advertising (or big budgets) to speak of. It may have taken Barack Obama's historic political campaign and election to alert the ad industry to the power of grass-roots marketing, but the ongoing success of Mozilla's Firefox marketing efforts are more relevant for most.

Last month I had the opportunity to meet with Paul Kim, Mozilla's VP-marketing, and some of his team to discuss Firefox's unique approach to marketing -- one where T-shirts have more cultural currency than 30-second spots and where the accomplishments of the Obama and Howard Dean campaigns are far more admired than the latest efforts from Nike or Apple.

Here's some of what makes Mozilla's Firefox grass-roots marketing efforts work:

SpreadFirefox.com
At the core of Firefox's efforts is SpreadFirefox.com, a digital hub for the Firefox community and all of its related marketing activities. There are three core components here. Users can join the community to participate in projects and chat with others via message boards; they can contribute by becoming part of an ongoing global project, such as "come up with and execute campaigns around '100% organic software' messaging"; and they can "spread," which enables users to join the Firefox affiliate program by getting and posting buttons.

Mozilla Labs
Mozilla Labs furthers the participatory nature of Firefox community beyond coding and distribution. Here users of all stripes can preview, play with and provide feedback on new features. Recent successes include "Personas," which is a prototype extension that allows lightweight personal "theming" for the browser, and the "Concept Series," which is focused on soliciting opinions and design directions for not only Firefox but the entire web. It's heady stuff.

Mozilla Community Store
T-shirts are the lingua franca of the Firefox fan base. As such, the Mozilla marketing group created an "open source" store. Like Threadless.com, users can either create their own designs and upload them to the site or simply browse from what's available and purchase whatever strikes their fancy. There are 124 designs to choose from.

Mozilla Campus Reps
Mozilla found early success with Firefox by targeting and reaching college students well before reaching the mainstream. To help formalize and accelerate adoption the company broke new ground by creating the "Campus Reps" programs which helped foster strong word-of-mouth and activities on Facebook and Twitter.

FastestFirefox.com
This summer, to help promote the release of Firefox 3.5, Mozilla created a site to solicit user-generated videos promoting the speed of the new browser. The effort is similar to a previous campaign, Firefox Flicks, which sourced an array of dynamic 30-second spots from users across the globe. This time, a cute spot from the world's fastest clapper, Kent "Toast" French, starts things off.

And there's much more. This year Firefox will launch a Creative Collective, which will attempt to further organize and build Mozilla's visual-design community, and Mozilla Hacks, which will highlight the features of Firefox 3.5 with 35 days of demos. This is all in addition to providing ongoing tools and materials for users to host their own events, participate in guerilla marketing efforts, advertise and blog, tag and use social networks.

Ultimately all the marketing that Mozilla does on Firefox's behalf is to encourage community participation. From affiliate programs to crowd-sourced viral videos, each action Mozilla takes is focused on fostering a sense of ownership by the community and reinforcing Firefox's authenticity in the marketplace.

Of course, it could be argued that Mozilla is so unique that its grass-roots marketing programs can't be replicated. Firefox is an open-source software product: It's free and it has a massive and devoted global developer community to leverage. It's not as if Mozilla is trying to sell soap or burgers.

But that's a shortsighted perspective. Grassroots marketing, it turns out, is perfectly suited for our digital, networked world. New players such as T-shirt company Threadless and the micro-finance company Kiva.com have built businesses through these tactics, as have a few more established companies such as Amazon (which built its business through an affiliate marketing program), PayPal, Zappos.com and even Google. Let's not forget about Barack Obama either.

As the ad industry starts to look beyond traditional advertising formats (both digital and analog), Firefox's grass-roots success can't be ignored.

Despite the collective nature of Mozilla, there is still a robust, savvy marketing department at work, albeit a much smaller one than that Apple or Microsoft. And, like any good advertiser or marketer, Mozilla's marketing team is explicitly focused on driving adoption, creating an image, inspiring our imagination and moving people to identify, evangelize and -- ultimately -- choose their product.

~ ~ ~
Garrick Schmitt is group VP of experience planning at Razorfish and the agency's global lead for user experience. He publishes FEED, Razorfish's annual consumer experience report, and writes and edits the Razorfish Digital Design Blog. In his spare time he flails about on Twitter @gschmitt. Audi and Levi's are Razorfish clients.

24 Comments

By SHAUN | NEW YORK, NY June 10, 2009 06:05:49 pm:

Yes indeed. We reference Mozilla often as an organization worth emulating.

The more you drill down, the more you realize how organized these efforts are, even if the tasks are spread across a large, distributed community.

Thanks for sharing.

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By Nealers | Coquitlam, BC June 10, 2009 06:58:10 pm:

Great article.

I wonder if any of the "biggest and most valuable brands in the world" can ever return to a grass roots marketing paradigm. I doubt any college kids be them "PC's" or not would ever wear a MS Vista Ringer T. Some companies are almost past the point of return.

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By CourtneyRShares | Victor, NY June 11, 2009 02:18:27 am:

Mozilla Firefox has the right idea. This is absolutely a time of getting "back to basics" and it's no surprise to me that this method of marketing to the public is effective right now. Being a recent graduate, I have found that campus reps provoking conversations about a company/brand can be extremely effective... especially since this company is based on such a commonly used method of communication - it's a very feasible way of inducing word-of-mouth.

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By jdavidknepper | Plant City, FL June 11, 2009 09:54:57 am:

Of course, the word-of-mouth efforts can be supplemented by occasional interviews in Advertising Age.

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By shelhoro | Hadley, MA June 11, 2009 09:59:36 am:

Yes, Firefox is a great example that it is indeed possible to grow largely by "if you build it, they will come." The trick, of course, is to provide a significantly better experience than the competition, and thus create a word-of-mouth army of ambassadors.

Google is another great example: Google overthrew much more established players in search by virtue of its clean interface and, more importantly, its superior speed and accuracy in delivering results. Once you somebody use it, you were hooked.

I actually discuss creating this kind of word-of-mouth army in my award-winning marketing books, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World and especially Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

--Shel Horowitz, www.FrugalMarketing.com

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By Craig | Wichita, KS June 11, 2009 10:14:50 am:

Garrick,

Excellent perspective. I agree. The unseen methodology is the magic. I immediately see applications to your/my/everyone's core business using the same tactics, transferable to our respective targets/industries. Thanks so much. -Craig Davis, CD-Vision Group

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By nickkinports | Chicago, IL June 11, 2009 11:14:28 am:

I have to say from what I have seen in the last month there is some kind of paradigm shift going on within the walls of Microsoft... Grassroots and the type of marketing that made Firefox so ubiquitous may be the next move for Redmond.

Nicholas E. Kinports
Digital Integration Manager, Maddock Douglas
Blog: http://admaven.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/admaven

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By adamengst | Ithaca, NY June 11, 2009 02:55:17 pm:

No offense, but I think you're ignoring the primary marketing that Mozilla does - they produce a best-of-breed program that's become well-known via word-of-mouth to be an excellent alternative to bundled browsers and they give it away for free. I'd bet that a minuscule percentage of Firefox users came to the program because of some marketing effort in comparison.

cheers... -Adam

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By lhoward222 | hoboken, NJ June 11, 2009 10:57:47 pm:

Firefox, Amazon, Zappos, etc. ... "grass roots" or "social media marketing," whatever you want to call it, takes time to take hold. And many marketers are not willing to invest in such efforts without some sort of guarantee of revenue results, quarter by quarter. Much to my dismay.

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By subbuinblr | Bangalore June 12, 2009 12:41:04 am:

There is a very important aspect of Firefox marketing - their product, the browser.

I only use Firefox and love the user experience. More importantly, I am an evangelist of sorts having converted lot of my family members and friends to shift to Firefox.

Your insight into their marketing efforts is really wonderful. But we know that marketing techniques can only work when you have a 'awesome' product. In that Mozilla and Firefox win hands down.

I thank you for this interesting behind-the-scenes story about Firefox. My loyalty towards them has only gotten reinforced.

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By craigcooper | craigcooper.com, NY June 12, 2009 01:31:46 am:

As adamengst said -- Firefox is free.

That part of the equation doesn't work for 99.99% of marketers -- not to mention the screaming shareholders lording it over them.

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By annie92 | Paris June 12, 2009 03:05:23 am:

http://www.funnyfox.fr was one of the first and very successfull viral ad campaign for Firefox. It spreads the world with more than 10.000.000 views. It was created by viral agency Pozz (http://www.minurl.fr/g3t ) based in Paris.

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By annie92 | Paris June 12, 2009 03:06:36 am:

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By annie92 | Paris June 12, 2009 03:09:25 am:

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By ssent1 | Victoria, BC June 12, 2009 03:25:58 am:

First, great grassroots marketing starts very simply with great products. I think we can all safely say that Firefox is an excellent browser.

Second, offer real innovation and insight. Clearly web users had great desire for a customized browsing experience. Delivering this well gave Ff users something to talk about and share.

Finally, passionate users. Users want to evangelize products they love. Grassroots marketing works well in these cases.

The unfortunate reality is that most of our time is spent helping soulless corporations "sell" products that have very little real value to offer.

Cheers,
Syd

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By moreonion | Vienna, AT June 12, 2009 08:54:07 am:

I truely believe in the "pull" strategy firefox is using. Certainly it does matter that the product they're selling is free but consider that all the others are free as well - just that firefox as has the smallest marketing budget ;-)

here's my reblogging and comment:
http://advertising-hints.blogspot.com/2009/06/mozilla.html

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By gschmitt | San Francisco, CA June 12, 2009 12:52:45 pm:

Thanks for all of the insightful comments. Re: Firefox and "free", I think the real focus should be on how well Firefox does when similar offering from Microsoft, Apple and Google are all "free". Clearly that success is what we should be looking at -- and at a fraction of the competition's budget.

More broadly, I think it's more about how one builds a brand that drives preference & loyalty, when competitive offerings are at a similar level of cost and quality.

Great thread. Thanks.

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By jkrawl | Chicago, IL July 28, 2009 10:22:07 pm:

Firefox's grassroots marketing and word of mouth approach is more proof that we need to get back to the basics of Marketing 101 again. With community based advertising and social media buzzing, traditional advertising is excelling at rates far beyond high cost media ads....especially if you have a great product that everyone loves, and is free at the same time.

One thing we must learn and take heed, from the Obama campaign, twitter phenom, and firefox, is that grassroots word of mouth advertising is a very legitimate marketing engine that can brand your company's image in the marketplace far greater than most expensive ad campaigns.

Frank
http://www.absrocketpro.com

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By BPoston | Raleigh, NC August 14, 2009 10:35:15 am:

Great article, and I agree with the fact that 1) the product is awsome and 2) since it's free and open source it's probably easier to market in some ways.
And I can certainly attest to the effectiveness of it's marketing to college kids. I have two in college and they don't even know how to spell I.E. :-)
But the real lesson here is that IF you have a great product and have the expertise in guerilla marketing (or it's other definitions - "organic", "grassroots", etc) Then you're much farther ahead of the game.

Ben
http://www.howtobuildgolfclubs.com

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By michal9549 | Roseville, CA August 15, 2009 11:27:58 pm:

They have absolutely mastered grass roots marketing. But what has added to to their success is the product works incredible. Anyone who asks for my recommendation I always direct them to Firefox. Very fast loading and all the plug-ins, just amazing. Take an amazing product and ad some genius grass roots marketing and you a great formula for success.

Michael

http://www.thepsychicpower.com/how-to-psychic.htm

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By gmiddleton | Indiana, PA August 17, 2009 12:15:46 pm:

In terms of "grass roots" Firefox by far is the text book definition. Sometimes it's good to have an "old school" approach and go back to the basics. Today it's easy to get caught up in all the hype of the latest and greatest product, or method of doing something, but once again, the proof is here in the pudding. To be an open source company and run with the "big dogs", says a lot about their Marketing and development teams.

Best,

Gaston
http://www.Ultimate-Resell-Rights.com

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By kablyden | Huntersville, NC August 24, 2009 05:40:24 pm:

One thing that can not be overlooked when speaking of Firefox's success is

1) there was a gap in the market which opened up an opportunity for them... Many consumers were very unhappy with their browsing experience using the popular browsers at the time..

2) The Quality of their product - They developed a high quality product that filled that void...

In other words it was not all kum-bye-a and daisies that built their market share... They developed a arguable a much more superior product, and then laser targeted a campaign to "evangelize" and make rabid fans of the most passionate group of consumers of this product.. Through their community sites they gave these consumers input an a voice..

Brilliant indeed :-)

Kirschan
http://www.fdiinsider.com

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By promotion123 | Arana HIills September 4, 2009 09:20:46 am:

I in no way disagree with what you say however there will never be an end to searching for new promotional ideas or avenues for improving marketing and that is just how we are built. We get bored with things easily and have to have something new to influence us.
Regards
Doug
http://www.promotionproducts.com.au/

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By websmart | Stone Mountain, GA September 13, 2009 07:06:29 pm:

This is a great article on grassroots marketing. It shed a lot of light and specifics on the Firefox marketing strategy which I previously did not have a lot of knowledge about. I found it to be fascinating and enlightening. Although I believe the main driver of Firefox's success is it's innovative addons that propels it's unbelievable word-of-mouth marketing results, it's very obvious that the company's grassroots marketing campaigns greatly accelerates the process.

Ed
http://www.razore200.com/kids-electric-scooters/childrens-scooters

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